The hotel doorman gave Shayne precise directions for finding Ben Edwards’s house. It was an unimpressive frame structure on a wide corner lot two blocks from the ocean.
Shayne shut off his motor and sat slouched behind the wheel for a moment. Two front windows showed light behind drawn shades.
He swung his long body out to the sidewalk and opened a wire gate on a neatly painted picket fence. The lawn was smooth and freshly mown, and there was not much shrubbery, the net effect giving an atmosphere of quiet dignity to the small house.
Stepping onto the wooden porch, he rang the bell and dragged off his hat when the door opened. He faced a motherly woman who studied him with still, gray eyes, then smiled and said, “Yes?”
Shayne asked, “Is Mr. Edwards in?” and she shook her graying head. Folding plump hands over her neat tan house dress, she said, “But I’m expecting him any minute. He’s generally through at the office before this.” Her manner and voice were patiently cordial, carrying a half-voiced invitation for the stranger to come in and wait.
Shayne promptly accepted by saying, “Do you mind if I wait a few minutes? It’s important.”
“Of course not.” She pushed the screen open and Shayne went past her into a small, well-lighted living-room. A Scottie romped toward him over the clean, worn rug, his tail erect and courteously wagging. He sniffed the cuffs of Shayne’s trousers, then allowed the detective to scratch the back of his neck. He retired with dignity after this amenity was concluded. Raising his head, Shayne saw a bright-faced boy of eight or ten who was curled up in a deep chair with schoolbooks and papers. He said, “Hello.”
The boy observed the newcomer with questioning eyes and replied, “Good evening,” in a disinterested tone.
“You’ll have to excuse Tommy’s manners,” his mother apologized. “He’s always too buried under books and papers to stand up.”
Tommy then added his own apology, which was a big grin that spread over his freckled face, and resumed his schoolwork.
Shayne turned to the woman and said, “I presume you’re Mrs. Edwards.” She nodded, and he introduced himself.
“I knew you the instant I saw you at the door, Mr. Shayne. I recognized you from that picture in the afternoon paper.”
An animated, “Gee!” came from Tommy. “The detective, huh?”
“Now, Tommy,” his mother admonished.
Shayne chuckled. “Do I add up to your idea of a private dick, Tommy?”
“You look plenty tough, all right. Boy! the way you mowed ’em down at the hotel! The Green Hornet couldn’t of done no better.”
“Couldn’t have done any better, Tommy,” his mother corrected patiently. “Won’t you take this rocker, Mr. Shayne?”
Shayne said he would. He sat down just back from the circle of light provided by one floor lamp between Tommy’s chair and a faded couch. Mrs. Edwards sat on the end of the couch nearest the lamp and picked up a sewing-basket, carefully arranged her glasses which had been laid aside when she answered the door, snipped a thread with her teeth, and said, “I suppose it’s something about the counterfeiting you’ve come to see Ben about, but I don’t know what he could tell you.”
“Dad hadda go down to take pictures of the gangsters you killed,” Tommy put in importantly. “Maybe you’ve killed some more gangsters since then, huh? Maybe that’s why he ain’t home yet.”
His mother corrected his grammar again and admonished him to get his homework finished. Tommy said, “Isn’t,” his eyes bright and questioning on Shayne.
Shayne shook his head. “I haven’t bumped into any more of them, Tommy.” He turned his body in the rocking chair to face Mrs. Edwards. “Is your husband a professional photographer?”
“He takes all the pictures for the Voice, along with setting type and a dozen other things.” Mrs. Edwards bent her head and began sewing up a split in a boy’s shirt. The lamp-glow turned her hair to dark silver, giving the illusion of a bright halo over her head where the new hairs curled up.
Tommy fidgeted in his chair and regarded Shayne with awed eyes, but said nothing more. A smoking-stand by Shayne’s elbow held an ash tray. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, let smoke trail lazily from his nostrils. Casually, he asked, “Do you know any reason why a lawyer from Miami-Mr. Samuelson-would be coming up here to see your husband?”
Mrs. Edwards jabbed the point of the needle into her thumb. Her hands jerked and spilled the contents of the sewing-basket on to the couch. Her eyes looked at Shayne steadily, veiled now, and secretive.
“A lawyer? From Miami? Why-no, I certainly don’t know, Mr. Shayne.”
“Shucks, Ma,” Tommy broke in, “that’s the name of the guy that-”
She silenced him with a sharp “Tommy!” Her pursed lips rebuked him, then she directed, “Take your things and go to your room. Say good night to Mr. Shayne.”
“Aw, gee, Ma, I-”
She said, “Tommy!” again, and he dropped his eyes from hers and nodded. He gathered up his books and papers in silence, then submissively arose and said, “Good night, Mr. Shayne.”
Shayne sucked on his cigarette and didn’t say anything. Mrs. Edwards gathered her sewing into her lap again and said, “I don’t know what gets into Tommy sometimes. He’s so anxious not be left out of grown-up talk that he makes things up to get attention.”
“Not at all strange for a bright youngster like Tommy.” Shayne paused, looking away from the woman, then continued: “But he wasn’t making up his story about Mr. Samuelson.”
Her toil-roughened hands lay still in her lap. When the detective looked at her he saw abject fright and pleading in her eyes. “Is Ben-is he in any trouble, Mr. Shayne?”
“Not that I know of. Not yet.”
“But-what did you mean about the lawyer?”
“I’m trying to get some information,” he told her readily. “Max Samuelson is a bloodsucker. He’s known as the smartest patent attorney in the South, but I pity the unsuspecting inventor who gets in his clutches. If your husband has an invention, tell him to stay away from Samuelson.”
“My husband hasn’t any invention.” Mrs. Edwards pressed blunt finger tips against her eyes. “I don’t know where-people get that idea.”
“I got it from Samuelson’s interest in him. Maxie wouldn’t be putting his nose in the picture if he didn’t smell profits.”
“Do you mean Mr. Samuelson is here-in Cocopalm?”
Shayne nodded. He leaned back and crossed his legs. “He’s in town right now-guarded by a couple of torpedoes from Miami-gunmen, to you. There’s something up, and I can’t put my finger on it.”
Mrs. Edwards moved her head slowly from side to side. Her wide, generous mouth was puckered into a tight slit. “I really don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Shayne. It’s true that Ben is-well, he putters in his workshop in the shed outside in his spare time. A month or so ago he got excited when he thought he had made a great discovery-an invention, he called it. Mr. Hardeman suggested that he talk to a lawyer in Miami-about patents and such things.” She spread out her hands and relaxed her lips into a tremulous smile. “That’s all it ever came to. Ben decided not to get a patent, though Mr. Samuelson urged him to do so. He felt that the lawyer was just encouraging him in order to get a big fee.”
Shayne crushed out his cigarette in the ash tray. “Did Mr. Edwards continue to work on his discovery?”
“No. He hasn’t been to the workshop for weeks. I do wish he would come home,” she added nervously, glancing at the clock on the mantel. “He could tell you much more about it than I can.”
“Do you suppose I could get him by phoning the newspaper office?”
Mrs. Edwards arose with alacrity and said, “I’ll try. I’m sure he’d come on if he knew you were waiting to see him,” and went into an adjoining room.
Shayne heard a car pass the house slowly, stop, then turn in the center of the block and return, gathering speed as it passed the corner.
Mrs. Edwards came back into the living-room looking frankly worried. “Mr. Matrix says he left half an hour ago. He had a telephone call and went out immediately. I don’t know where on earth he could have gone.”
Shayne sat up alertly. He started to rise, then paused to ask, “Why did you lie to me about Max Samuelson when I first asked? Why did you deny you knew him?”
Mrs. Edwards winced under the blunt accusation. She twined her fingers together in front of her, then faltered, “Well, I-a lot of people here in Cocopalm laugh at Ben about his inventions. They’d laugh still more if they knew he’d called in a famous patent lawyer-and nothing ever came of it.”
Shayne nodded, as though he believed her. He got up. “I won’t wait any longer, since your husband has been detained. But I wish you’d have him call me at the Tropical Hotel as soon as he gets in.”
“Of course, Mr. Shayne. I’m sure Ben will be glad to talk with you.”
She went to the door with him, her hand going nervously to her throat while he said “Good night, Mrs. Edwards,” and went out.
She was still standing in the doorway when he turned to latch the wire gate behind him, a stout, short figure back-lighted by the rectangle of light, with something pathetic yet essentially courageous in her posture of patient waiting.
Shayne drove swiftly back to the hotel. He strode into the lobby and noted that Melvin and Hymie were no longer seated near the elevators. He went to the desk and described the pair, mentioned where they had been sitting.
The clerk said he had noticed them sitting there. “They were two of Mr. Samuelson’s party.”
“Did you see them go out?”
“I believe so. Almost immediately after you, sir.”
Shayne grunted his disappointment. That meant that Gentry would scarcely have had time to arrange a tail for them. “Is Samuelson in now?” he asked.
“No, sir. He hasn’t gone up to his room since registering. He asked for Mr. Hardeman as soon as he arrived-then went out, presumably to see him at the race track when I said that was where Mr. Hardeman could be found.”
Shayne nodded and wheeled around. He crossed the lobby in a few long strides and flung himself into his roadster. He paused with his fingers on the ignition switch. The full-bodied scream of a siren sounded from south of town. It expired into a faint moan, then silence.
Shayne turned the switch and pressed the starter. He backed away from the curb, made an illegal U turn and sped southward.
Headlights were converging on a spot in the street a few blocks south of the business district. He pulled past a row of parked cars, nosing beyond the authoritative hand of a distracted policeman who tried to stop him, on to the edge of a circle of onlookers pressed about a crumpled body lying by the side of the road.
An ambulance stood just beyond, and two white-coated men were bending over the body. One of them shook his head and said something to the other. They both straightened up and spoke to Chief Boyle, who stood inside the circle.
Shayne pressed through, glancing down at the dead man. Sightless eyes peered up at him and he recognized the stoop-shouldered man he had seen in the office of the Cocopalm Voice.
“I couldn’t avoid it,” Albert Payson was saying over and over in a flat monotone. “I didn’t see him at all. He must have been crouching in the shadow of that clump of oleanders waiting for a car to come by so he could jump out under the wheels. There’s no other way to account for it. I tell you I didn’t see him. I felt my wheels bump something. My first thought was that I had struck a dog. I came to a stop immediately and rushed back. I was appalled when I saw a man lying there.”
“Sure, Mr. Payson,” Chief Boyle interrupted sympathetically, putting his hand on the local financier’s trembling arm. “Sure, we understand, sir. I don’t reckon you’re to blame. We all knew Ben Edwards was sort of nutty. Must have slipped an extra cog all of a sudden and chose this way to kill himself.”
Shayne turned his back on Boyle and Payson. He stepped back to the body of Ben Edwards lying just beyond a dark patch of shadows cast on the pavement by the moon shining through the oleander. He knelt down beside the body, oblivious of the stares and the murmuring of those who pressed close, made a quick examination of the corpse.
He got up and went back to Boyle, who was still assuring Albert Payson that he mustn’t take the accident too much to heart, that it was clearly unavoidable.
Shayne laughed grimly. The chief swung around to gape at him. Shayne said, “Accident, hell! If you weren’t so damned occupied with soothing this bird’s fright, you’d know Ben Edwards had been murdered.”
“Murdered?” Chief Boyle gulped the word out.
Shayne nodded angrily. “Of course. Don’t let anyone touch the body until the coroner gets here.”